Those officials argue that the A’s aren’t sitting on their hands and raking in revenue sharing, but prudently ensuring a lower-cost stadium in an ideal spot.

“If you don’t have to do it, you’re not going to,” Dolich said. “The A’s have a brilliant business plan, and I’m not saying that cynically. The value of the franchise is $800 million, the profits are significant and they don’t have to be a ...

In the mid-1960s, Columbia University professor Lawrence Ritter put 75,000 miles on his car driving around the United States, interviewing aging ballplayers. The result was the finest baseball book and one of the best oral histories for any subject. Long before ESPN or MLB Network, Ritter helped give a group of largely forgotten players new life. It’s valuable, historically important work. Oft imitated in the 50 years since publication, the ...

The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday took the extraordinary step of suing AT&T, alleging that its DirecTV television unit orchestrated an illegal campaign to block wide carriage of the television channel owned by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, the Justice Department accused DirecTV of being a ringleader in an effort to make sure that three other pay-TV companies — Cox Communications, Charter Communications and AT&T (which was then ...

The world champion Boston American baseball team was sold [yesterday] to Harry H. Frazee of New York and Hugh Ward of Philadelphia.
...
Mr. Frazee and Mr. Ward are both identified with theatricals, the former being the present owner of the Cort Theater of Chicago and the Longacre Theater of New York. The new owners gave few details as to definite plans for the club, but said:

“When we went into the thing we did not buy a cheap team, we bought ...

“We wanted to make them use pitching, even in a loss. Hang around. At least Chapman had to pitch,” Manager Terry Francona said.
...
The whole package is tied together by perhaps the best manager of this period, Terry Francona, who is driven himself, to the point where his health has often been worrisome, while still “managing” — there’s that word again — to convince everyone that baseball is just a blast.

These deals were a considerable factor, though not the only one, in improving the Philadelphia system to the point where, two years after finishing at the bottom, it finished 482-348 for the best winning percentage (.581) among National League organizations and second in all of baseball. (Seattle had a .590 winning percentage.) For that overall performance, which netted five domestic affiliates a trip to the playoffs, and for their depth of quality prospects, the Phillies earned ...

So Aroldis Chapman got five outs that the other Cubs relievers probably could have gotten. Those outs may well have been borrowed from Game 7, in a situation where the Cubs might really be able to use a full-strength Chapman on the mound. But they won’t have that, because when push came to shove, Joe Maddon only trusts one of his relievers right now.

For his sake, I hope he doesn’t need that one reliever to bail him out tomorrow.

I still don’t like the move. The team still needed to win two. He should have had someone else up and ready. It’s all about the odds.

“It’s the middle of their batting order,” Maddon said. “There is no other way to look at that and feel good. Lindor, he could hit a home run at any time, but it’s much more difficult to hit it against Chapman’s velocity.

“For me, the game could have been lost right there, and he’s by far our most dynamic relief pitcher. I talked to him before the ...

The first name that leaps off the page in the full data set is Bill Lajoie, whose draftees were collectively over 2.5 times more valuable than league average (258.9 bWAR+). Drafting Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Jack Morris, Lance Parrish, Kirk Gibson and an unsigned Ozzie Smith over a five-year span will do that for you. Joe McIlvaine’s draftees weren’t quite as valuable as Lajoie’s (234 bWAR+) but he produced more per year (5.8 to Lajoie’s 4.2). His highlights include Lenny Dykstra, ...

Jeurys Familia, an All-Star pitcher for the New York Mets who was featured in a new ad campaign for an anti-domestic violence organization, was arrested on a domestic violence charge this week, according to a complaint filed by authorities in Fort Lee municipal court.

Police said in the complaint that Familia caused “bodily injury to another” and that they observed a scratch to the chest and a bruise to the right cheek of the victim, whose name was redacted in the court papers provided to ...

The difference is jarring, creating a surface impression that baseball takes a harsher stance against PEDs than domestic violence. But in the view of both baseball and the players’ union, the comparison is not apples to apples.

The joint PED policy is the outlier; no other suspensions in baseball include a postseason ban. The two sides agreed to the additional penalty in March 2014 after some players expressed anger that two players suspended for PEDs the previous season, Jhonny Peralta and ...

There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever what Buck O’Neil would say. Buck dealt with every indignity. He was denied a chance to play or manage in the Major Leagues because of the color of his skin. He knew Doby, played against him, managed against him, worked with him in various roles. He, better than any of us, understands.

Only it’s silly to pretend the Indians lucked their way all the way here. The point of baseball’s 162-game regular season is to distinguish the best teams from the back, and the Indians won 94 games in the 2016 campaign. They got to this point with the help of a pair of excellent starting pitchers who have been largely absent this postseason — the injured Carlos Carrasco and the recently recovered Danny Salazar. But they also featured a spectacular bullpen, even beyond postseason heroes ...

The long games aren’t well suited for hardcore fans either. If the Cubs weren’t playing this year, I’d be tapping out early or not watching at all.

It’s not a great thing that baseball gets slower and less eventful at the point in the season when the most people are paying attention. Serious fans who logged six months of steady viewing along the path to the postseason might not mind what they perceive as protracted suspense, but drawn-out, uneventful ordeals such as World Series Game 2 (4:04) ...

Elo ratings are FiveThirtyEight’s favorite method for comparing teams across different eras — we’ve previously used them to explore the history of the NBA and NFL. The ratings are an intentionally simple measure of team strength based on the final score, location and date of a team’s games. Now we’ve calculated them for 89 franchises across 146 years of baseball history — more than 400,000 ratings in total.

Elo is calibrated so that an average MLB team has a rating of around 1500, ...